Developing new designs for surface coverings, by producing a prototype to show a potential customer prior to making a mass produced product available, is expensive and typically takes three months or more. This is mainly due to the cost and time to develop print cylinders and embossing cylinders.
Customers are demanding shorter and shorter development times and more input into the final design of the product. It would be advantageous to have a means to quickly (within a matter of days) modify a design, produce a prototype that will faithfully imitate the final product, and be capable of producing commercial quantities of the final product at a rate to meet initial commercial demand.
Current methods of prototyping surface covering are expensive, because each change in design requires the rotogravure printing cylinder and the standard embossing roll to be re-etched or re-engraved. If the surface covering is chemically embossed, any change in the chemical embossing also requires re-etching or re-engraving of the print cylinder. The process of remaking the cylinders is expensive and time consuming.